Tuesday, October 11, 2016

In a tight situation

Getting the door panel off.

Elder MacGyver to the rescue!

Okay, so I want to say before I start, all of
this happened to me two weeks ago. The story that goes with this
experience is crazy!!

So, it is Wednesday
and we have just eaten lunch. We are getting ready to leave a bit early
so that we could get a head start on the service project that we had
already started at the kindergarten where we are painting a small mural.
But, before we head out, we stopped by the church to meet with the
elders quorum president to talk to him about some of the people that we
could maybe help him with. We are going through a pretty large list with
him when Bryan shows up with his grandmother to the church to take care
of an activity that they would be having in another hour or so. While
we are conversing about the different families that we could help,
Bryan had a couple questions about his missionary folder and asked if I
could help him with it. I told him I could for sure help him and we went
back to the secretary of the church. The secretary is a room where the
computers, all the electronics for the wi-fi, and a television are kept.
They are kept there because the secretary is a sort of metal vault. I'm
not sure of the exact reason why it is so heavy duty. Two guesses are
one, because there is private information about members of that
particular church stored in that room like phone numbers, addresses and
other things. The other guess is because it is kind of necessary to keep
electronics like computers, routers, and televisions under lock and key. They still aren't super common in South America.

A
quick side story to help y'all understand this a little better. Right
before I got to Chile last January the church in which I was assigned
was broken into and the secretary was cut open with like an industrial
blow torch. I'm not sure exactly what it was but it left some huge burn
marks on the walls. This was all done just to get a TV, a computer,and
the monitor to go with the computer. So that's why it is
necessary to have the vaults as storage. Anyways, back to the story.

I
help Bryan finish up his work as Elder Gali is finishing talking about
the list. As we are leaving, I thought it would be funny to shut the
door behind me and close Bryan in the room. I did it, and it was funny. I
let him out and all was good in the world. But then, I had to grab
something out from the secretary before we could head out to do the
service project. I got what I needed... but as some pay back, Bryan
closed the door on me and locked the vault door just like I had done to
him. But this time, when he tried to let me out something happened with
one of the rods in the door and it got stuck in place. That is how I got
stuck in a vault last week...... And everything after that went
something like this. The president of the branch coming and trying to
tackle the door down, which didn't work and just made a ton of noise.
The mammita that we eat lunch with telling me to stay relaxed and just
watch a movie on the computer (which I didn't do). Some maintenance
workers or contractors that came and then cussed at the door because it
was some fancy German brand. I never actually saw these two guys. And
then, the fire department with the big saw they had that they didn't
actually get to use.

Back tracking a little
bit, as soon as the door was found out to be closed and not opening on
its own I started trying to find out if there was a way that I could get
out that wasn't the door. I checked the roof, it was solid metal. I
checked the walls, concrete. And so once I started to realize that I was
only going to get out through the door, I started to think of ways that
I could ether break the door more or fix it enough to get out. The
biggest problem I had was that I had no tools with me. Most of the stuff
that was in the secretary was too expensive for me to want to break. So
of the stuff that I felt comfortable taking apart I had, an old radio,
my watch, a fork, and some older ether net cables. After a ton of trial
and error with these things, (I had taken apart my watch to use the metal
band as a flat head screw driver) I used that to open up a door
panel that showed the mechanism of the vault door. With the antennas
from the radio and the fork, I found out which pin was broken and
started to take it apart. The pin that did go bad was part of a dead bolt that you could lock from the inside if you were working in there,
but had broken off inside the door. So with the antenna and fork, I got
the dead bolt taken apart from the inside as best as I could. I
couldn't see a ton because this was all inside the door. Once it was
loose, I used the Ethernet cord to pull down on it enough to get it out.
Keep in mind all of this took me about 3 hours to get done while all of
that other stuff was happening outside. Just as they were about to cut
through the roof with the big saw, I got the door opened!! The next day,
the same contractors were able to come back and replace the deadbolt
with a new one. Now the door works fine. The members still tease me a
ton for getting stuck in there and Bryan even more for closing the door.
But seeing as he leaves today for his mission in Mexico, it won't
matter much for him. So everyone in the Mexico, Cancun area look out for
Elder Valencia!!! Okay that is my story for this week, and I will
probably go back to the normal updates next week.